Live-in tornado

She plays her music too loud. Her room is a mess! Combs, curling iron, nail polish, bottles of shampoo and varies other hair and facial products, decorate any flat surface. Bath and shower water runs almost non-stop whenever she is on the premises.

Shoes coming out of the upstairs windows and yet she never has the ‘right’ kind to wear with the outfit for today. She wears sandals in the snow, boots in the Spring.

She’s never hungry at meal time and starving all the other hours of day or night. Doesn’t have any homework until half an hour before the school bus is due. She practices cheerleader’s routine or the latest dance steps upstairs, we are sure the ceiling is falling.

Multiply this by two, for we have two of these little darlings here. Helping to raise these granddaughters is exhausting, but so rewarding! Keeping us young at heart, but sadly, a little weary of body. I try to see most volleyball and basketball games, but tournaments, and especially, track meets are the enemy of the old! Early seventies is not the age to balance one’s weight on the absent hand-rail bleachers. If you manage to arrive early enough you can find a place at the ground level, letting everyone else kick your head or shoulder as they try to ascend or descend, hands full of containers of icy drinks and boxes of popcorn, trying to hang onto little kids at the same time.

Can you tell by now that I am NOT a sports fan? The extent of my interest would be watching some of the Olympic events sitting in my recliner with the remote in my left hand, ready to change the channel … short attention span when it comes to watching even the best in the world perform.

Our live-in tornados are the love and interest of our lives and we wouldn’t trade places with our friends that have all that peaceful, rather lonely lives. We know that will come soon enough. When the girls are gone overnight or for a weekend, we barely move, sometimes instead of a wholesome meal, we snack in front of the T.V. We can call friends and eat out and we do that when we dare plan 2 hours ahead. But mostly we are content with the quiet, for as long as it lasts.

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Our rewards are many. They laugh or cry a lot, bringing life into the house. When a tragedy strikes as in, a favorite girlfriend snubbed her today – horrors! I find myself wishing they would consider getting a lower grade than they should, a much more serious happening.

A thank-you hug at bedtime is our satisfaction and reward. Would we take on the job again? You bet!